Gnuwon wrote:
Who usually pays for a coaching situation like this......the skater or the association?
The answer depends upon which country you're talking about.
In Russia and China (and North Korea), the federation handles expenses -- ice time, equipment, off-ice training, medical and training services, coaching, costumes, even living expenses. Because they're footing the bill, that gives the federation (which is effectively an arm of the government) a huge amount of control over who works with which coaches and choreographers, who gets assigned to which competitions, music and costume choices, even assigning partners in pairs and dance. The athletes are effectively salaried employees of the state, and follow orders as employees do everywhere (even if those orders include taking performance-enhancing drugs, as recent evidence has alleged). The athletes don't have to worry about juggling their finances or other off-ice details, but can concentrate on training and improving their performance.
This stands in huge contrast to the rest of the world, where the sport largely operates on a free-market basis. Skaters (or their parents) are responsible for the bills, but they can choose their own coaches and partners as well as music, choreography, costumes, training locations, etc. The national federations have much less control: they can
suggest things, but their power is mostly limited to selecting who goes to which competitions (and perhaps who the judges might favor or promote).
Given the stark differences between these two approaches, I'm intrigued by how Evgenia's move to a Western coach will be handled financially. Will she pay the bills herself (she does tour and so presumably has an income source, plus she probably has corporate sponsorship deals), or with the RSF continue to fund her training with a foreign coach over whom they exert no control?
An article posted online recently by Phil Hersh, one of the best-known skating journalists, addressed this very issue. It leaves the impression that these details are still being worked out:
http://www.globetrottingbyphiliphersh.com/home/2018/5/9/figure-skating-olympics-russia-canada-orser-medvedevaFor a top Russian skater to move abroad and train with a Western coach is pretty much unprecedented in my memory (and I'm old enough to remember back to the '80s). After the demise of the Soviet Union, when state support for sports abruptly ended, a lot of Russian coaches were forced to move abroad in search of rinks and a living wage, and a few skaters followed them. But that doesn't really happen any more since Putin began funding sports again over the last decade. Evgenia's move feels almost like a small defection, and I suspect it's not winning her any popularity in the RSF. I'm very interested to see how it works out for her.